Date of birth December 1993 Name Sasha Hostyn Nationality Canada Role Video gamer | Nickname(s) Scarlett Home town Kingston | |
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Sasha Hostyn (born December 1993), also known by her username Scarlett, is a Canadian professional video game player. She is most known for her performance in StarCraft II, but in 2015, she began making the switch to playing Dota 2 instead. After not meeting any success in Dota 2 she has since returned to playing Starcraft II for Team Expert as of August 17th, 2016.
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Biography
Hostyn grew up in Kingston, Ontario, and played games as a hobby during school and began to enter tournaments in 2011, leading on to her career as a professional player. She is a transgender woman, which has led to harassment. Speaking of her gender identity, Hostyn says it has "absolutely no relevance" to how she plays, and that she has "always tried to make it a complete non-issue".
StarCraft
Hostyn became prominent in the StarCraft scene in 2012 when she beat a number of highly ranked professionals at an event in Las Vegas. In 2013, she climbed the global StarCraft rankings to rank 21, and placed second at NorthCon. By mid-2014, Hostyn had taken first place in seven tournaments, making her the second highest-paid professional female gamer. Since she began competing in tournaments, Hostyn has won over $110,000.
During her time playing StarCraft, Hostyn has been called "the queen of Starcraft II" and the "Korean Kryptonite". The New Yorker called her "the most accomplished woman in e-sports". She was the only Red Bull Battle Grounds 2014 finalist from a country other than South Korea. In 2014 Polygon named her one of 2014's 50 admirable gaming people, describing her as "one of the few women succeeding at the top level of the StarCraft 2 pro scene".
Dota 2
Having lost some of her "competitive drive" for StarCraft, Hostyn switched to playing Dota 2 in February 2015, saying "I’ve been playing a lot of Dota 2 so I'm going to practice and see if I can get good at that."
Return to Starcraft 2
As of June 2015, Hostyn has returned to Starcraft 2, joining the Dead Pixels team and will compete in Korean leagues.
On August 17th 2016 Scarlett joined Team Expert.
Awards
Scarlett was entered in the Guinness Book of Records as Highest career earnings for a competitive videogame player (female) on October 5th 2016.